The Uncertain Trump: The Stable Genius Will Lead Us Back To Prosperity

Nearly sixty years ago, the recently retired U.S. Army Chief of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor, wrote a best-selling book about changing our long-term military strategy. Imagine the book that President Donald Trump might someday write – or have ghost-written for him – about his own long-term economic strategy. In these growingly turbulent economic times, we must be thankful for having such a “stable genius” as our nation’s leader. Just imagine how, in an alternative universe, “Crazy Bernie” or “Pocahontas” would have managed our economy.

Know more about Russia than your friends:

In his latest attempt to “Make America great again,” President Trump has outdone himself. He has ordered American companies to pull up their stakes and move their offices and factories out of China, and perhaps back to the good old U.S.A.

Top value fund managers are ready for the small cap bear market to be done

During the bull market, small caps haven't been performing well, but some believe that could be about to change. Breach Inlet Founder and Portfolio Manager Chris Colvin and Gradient Investments President Michael Binger both expect small caps to take off. Q1 2020 hedge fund letters, conferences and more However, not everyone is convinced. BTIG strategist Read More

I think that virtually all of my fellow economists would agree – along with the leaders of all these American companies doing hundreds of billions of dollars of business in China -- that this just ain’t gonna happen.

Indeed, whether the president can or cannot force these companies to move their operations out of China is actually quite beside the point. The point is that they can’t and they won’t – no matter what the president orders them to do.

In fact, we can almost surely expect the president to back-peddle on this order, and then change his mind and then issue still more threats. But none of this really matters.

What does matter the most to the folks running our nation’s millions of businesses – large and small – is being able to plan months and even years ahead. But with this "stable genius" at our economic helm, they’re lucky if they can plan more than a day or two ahead.

Mr. Trump apparently has so many great ideas – albeit often contradictory – that he is not unknown to reverse course day-by-day. Well, with that kind of economic leadership, business uncertainty is rapidly mounting.

We can predict with confidence that lagging business investment will continue, while declining consumer confidence will soon lead to a slowdown in consumption spending. Finally, our trade wars will keep pushing up our steadily rising balance of trade deficits.

Still, economic forecasters can thank our president for making at least one thing increasingly certain. Our current economic slowdown is becoming more and more likely to turn into a full-blown recession. Luckily, after the 2020 election, we may still have our "stable genius" to lead us back to prosperity.

Steve Slavin has a Ph.D. in economics from NYU, and has written twenty math and economics books, including “The Great American Economy: How Inefficiency Broke It, and What We Can Do to Fix it.” The 12th edition of his introductory economics text came out in September.

FOLLOW VALUEWALK ON

ABOUT VALUEWALK

ValueWalk.com is a highly regarded, non-partisan site – the website provides unique coverage on hedge funds, large asset managers, and value investing. ValueWalk also contains archives of famous investors, and features many investor resource pages.

The Life and Career of Charlie Munger

You can learn from Charlie Munger firsthand via this incredible ebook and over a dozen other famous investor studies by signing up below:Charlie is more than just Warren Buffett’s friend and Berkshire Hathaway’s Vice Chairman – Buffett has actually credited him with redefining how he looks at investing. Now you can learn from Charlie firsthand via this incredible ebook and over a dozen other famous investor studies by signing up below:

Learn from the best and forever change your investing perspective

One incredible tidbit of knowledge after another in the page-turning masterpiece of a book

Discover the secrets to Charlie’s success and how to apply it to your investing